Luca Frei. Thursday followed Wednesday and Tuesday followed Monday and there was Sunday and there was Saturday and there was Friday

lucafrei-glarus

exhibition view at Kunsthaus Glarus, June 2013

The Sun Twenty Four Hours, 2011
6 metal shelves, 60 hourglasses, cardboards

Strengh, 2013
15 Horgenglarus chairs, modell classic 1-380

The End of Summer, 2013
rope, nail, coal

luca-frei-3

exhibition view at Kunsthaus Glarus, June 2013

Strengh, 2013
15 Horgenglarus chairs, modell classic 1-380

lucafrei-glarus-2

Stitched (Lines of Least Resistance), 2012
glass, copper foil, lead, iron, colour

lucafrei-glarus-3

detail from Stitched (Lines of Least Resistance), 2012
glass, copper foil, lead, iron, colour

lucafrei-glarus-4

What Time Is It?, 2009
wood, insulation material, gypsum, colour

Keywords after Raymond Williams, 2013
in collaboration with WILL HOLDER
acrylic, whitewash, plexiglas stencil

lucafrei-glarus-6

detail from Inheritance, 2013
24 b/w photograps on Baryte paper

lucafrei-glarus-5

Inheritance, 2013
24 b/w photograps on Baryte paper, 70 digital prints on foam

luca-frei-11

Inheritance, 2013
24 b/w photograps on Baryte paper, 70 digital prints on foam

all images © wfw

This summer the Kunsthaus Glarus dedicates a solo exhibition – with a title based from GERTRUDE STEIN’s novel Mrs.Reynolds – to the Swiss artist LUCA FREI. This exhibition includes a wide range of media, from photographs to paper works, from texts to installations, and transports the viewer into FREI‘s universe revolving on different aspects of time play, private and public, but also identity and memory.

For Thursday followed Wednesday and Tuesday followed Monday and there was Sunday and there was Saturday and there was Friday, two of the three principal spaces were filled with pieces such as What Time is It? (2009) which consists of rounded wall elements nestled vertically against one another, or The Sun Twenty Four Hours (2011), featuring sixty glass-blown hourglasses inviting visitors to leave behind their own temporal traces, as well as Stitched (Lines of Least Resistance, 2012), a series of glass works which have been broken and then reconnected using a technique from leaded glass painting. All these works confront seemingly rigid structures with creative play and an open end. Like this, processes despite a rigid setting open up spaces for creative intervention, subtle analogies and poetic moments.

The third space in Glarus was taken over by Inheritance (2013), a new work that draws from his late father’s archive of photographic negatives. He presents at knee-level a series of re-photographed sheets from the storage binders that his father, a professional photographer, used to archive his negatives. They serve as an unidentifiable supply for the selection of prints which are presented at eye-level. These are photographs of daily life from the Canton of Ticino where he grew up in the 1970s and 80s.

Attempts to tie FREIs works to definitive meanings or answers are futile, they exist to provide fertile, open-ended points of engagement, sparking new ideas and connections, triggering memories or past experiences that we bring to them. This playfulness goes hand in hand with a political undertow, a quietly subversive questioning of order and convention, and an imaginative resistance or alternative to the status quo. – Ingleby Gallery, 2008

LUCA FREI has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally in recent years, including The Fifth Business at the Bonner Kunstverein (solo, 2012), Aufruf zur Alternative, Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf (2011), The Moderna Exhibition 2010, Moderna Museet Stockholm (2010), All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerpen (2009), Audio, video, disco, Kunsthalle Zürich (2009). He also won the Swiss Art Award in 2009 and was an IASPIS resident in 2005.

Thursday followed Wednesday and Tuesday followed Monday and there was Sunday and there was Saturday and there was Friday is currently on view at Kunsthaus Glarus till August 11, 2013, additionally a catalogue is being published in cooperation with the Bonner Kunstverein.



comments are closed !